Cook County FPD Approves New Guidelines

On November 5, the Board of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County approved new guidelines for land management that had been assembled under the leadership of the new General Superintendent, Steve Bylina. The new guidelines replace inefficient and counterproductive work rules under which land managers — staff and volunteers alike — labored for nearly seven years. The FPD board had hastily adopted the rules in 1996 after articles in the Chicago Sun-Times criticized the restoration programs of Cook, Lake and DuPage County forest preserves.

The new guidelines encourage the use of best practices in ecosystem management, including cutting of invasive trees larger than four inches in diameter (such as black locust and silver poplar), when those trees are shading out high quality natural ecosystems. "Both staff and volunteer stewards highly respect and appreciate the new guidelines," said John Sheerin, president of Friends of the Forest Preserves, which supported the update. "Land management will now be both more efficient and better quality."